Children were illogically imaginative, with a timelessness which gave them an edge on adults when it came to solving problems that required a fresh approach to reality. What was it Wordsworth had said? _Trailing clouds of glory...._ "Daddy, Mr. Rayburn let us out early--so we could have a picnic. It would have been fun if Melvin hadn't spoiled everything. He ate up all of the peanut butter sandwiches himself." "Tattle tale!" "He got in a fight too. Freddy Mason didn't want to fight but Melvin started it!" "I _did_n't!" "You _did_! You know you did!" "That's a lie!" Elwood lowered his eyes and saw that both of his children were now as close to him as they could ever be. Mary Anne was tugging at his sleeve, begging him to take her part, and Melvin was appealing to him in man-to-man fashion, his contemptuous masculinity acting as a foil to his sister's feminine wiles. It was a grave crisis and Elwood recognized it as such. Ordinarily he would have shunned a cut-and-dried solution but for once he had no choice. * * * * * When children fall out, when you are backed into a corner and your authority totters, there is only one sure way to save yourself--_Occupy their minds with something else_. "You're spoiling the surprise, kiddies," Elwood said, striving to sound embittered. "It's been a lonesome hard day for me but I kept telling myself you'd soon be home to share my triumph. I suppose I shouldn't say this--but your mother just doesn't understand me the way you do." "What is it, daddy?" Mary Anne asked, a sudden warm solicitude in her gaze. "Yeah, Pop, tell us!" Melvin chimed in. "The rocket is just about completed," Elwood said. He felt Mary Anne's hand tighten on his sleeve and realised with elation that she was a scientist's daughter to her fingertips. He was gratified quite as much by the sudden hiss of Melvin's indrawn breath. "Come along--I'll show you!" he said. Elwood derived the most intense pleasure from showing groups of visiting dignitaries--scientific big shots for the most part--through his basement laboratory. But when the dignitaries happened to be his own children his elation knew no bounds. Down the basement stairs they trooped, Melvin to the right of him, Mary Anne to the left. A door opened with a gentle click, a light came on and Melvin let out a yell which resounded through the house. "You've got the blast reflector set up. _Pop!_" The rocket stood out, silver on black at its base, with a dull shine where it tapered to catch and hold the light. It was not large as rockets go. It was barely five feet in height, a miracle of technical craftsmanship wrought by the unerring skill and scientific knowhow of a very practical man with a family to support. But it had been built with an eye to beauty as well and as the light glimmered and danced on its sloping vanes it seemed as gracefully poised for flight as some half-mythical bird cast in metal by a long-vanished elfin race.